Forbes pointed to misleading data and claimed on Monday there had been over 330 “mass shootings” in the United States so far in 2023.
They labeled their report “breaking” news.
Writing at Forbes, Ana Faguy relied on the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), a pro-gun-control database which abandoned the long-standing definition of a “mass shooting” as four or more deaths in a single incident by a single gunman and replaced it with “a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, not including any shooter who may also have been killed or injured in the incident.” GVA’s new definition allows drive-by shootings, targeted gang attacks, and other non-mass shootings to be counted as “mass shootings,” thus inflating the number of reported incidents.
For example, on Monday Baltimore WBALTV reported that GVA was still counting the April 15, 2023, Dadeville, Georgia, birthday party attack as a “mass shooting.” GVA is doing this although at least six people have been arrested in connection with the attack.
Yet Faguy quoted GVA numbers, saying, “There have been more than 330 mass shootings so far this year, according to data collected by the Gun Violence Archive.”
Breitbart News noted that The Hill relied on GVA numbers last year and ended up claiming over 600 mass shootings in the United States by Thanksgiving Day 2022.
On July 26, 2021, Breitbart News observed that the GVA is also able to report higher numbers of “mass shootings” because it lists defensive gun uses and officer-involved gun uses against criminals as “gun violence.”
Breitbart News pointed out on May 7, 2023, that GVA’s new definition allows drive-by shootings, targeted gang attacks, and other non-mass shootings to be counted as “mass shootings,” thus increasing the number of reported incidents. While President Joe Biden was claiming there had already been “roughly 200 mass shootings” in America for the year, a database maintained by the Associated Press/USA Today/Northeastern University showed there had actually been 19 such incidents in the United States from January 1, 2023, to May 2, 2023.
AP/USA Today uses the long-standing definition of mass shooting instead of GVA’s redefinition.
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AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010, a speaker at the 2023 Western Conservative Summit, and he holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.